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The conviction this month in The Hague of Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese warlord, for forcing children to fight in his army in the early 2000s is merely the latest in a long line of cases of abuse of this kind that have blighted what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The civil wars which began in 1996 bled out of the nation’s borders to involve, in time, eight other African countries – leading to the label ‘Africa’s world war’ – as well as numerous unofficial militias, of which Lubanga’s was one. By the time a peace of sorts was established in 2003, about five and a half million people had died due to the fighting and the disease and starvation it caused.